The Great I Am.

[dafydd manton]

Oh, they taught me well.
They taught me how to be someone.
To express myself, to speak,
How to impress the others.
They taught me Euclid
To be lucid,
They taught me everything I knew.
I could stand there,
Pontificating,
Long words, complex,
Meaning fogged because it suited.
I was my own man,
I was the great teacher,
The great I AM,
So good, I even believed in me.
I believed in the letters after my name,
In The Myth,
In The System.
Then, I met you.
I couldn't speak, I stuttered
I couldn't think, I blushed
And couldn't do a thing.
Suddenly, I'm ten
Again.
Suddenly, I'm a boy.
Suddenly, I need.
Suddenly,
I need
Help.
X

[dafydd manton]

Sweet Bar, thank you so much for your suggestions. As ever, you are right. (Must be women's intuition!) I've changed it, and it is without doublt, much better. Salutations.

D

[Hawkman]

How terrible, the effect of love on the rational mind :D

Perhaps while preparing himself for the ordeal of courtship, the narator should have a shave with Ockham's Razor :devil:

[dafydd manton]

Entia non sunt indeed. However, it applies to the "rational" mind, so that lets me out!

Of course, it's not necessarily a love poem. It could have other meanings, such as being in awe of ......

[Hawkman]

Touché Mon vieux!

[Bar22do]

Sweet Bar, thank you so much for your suggestions. As ever, you are right. (Must be women's intuition!) I've changed it, and it is without doublt, much better. Salutations.

D

Are you a mind reader, Daf?! You haven't even given me time to comment and you answer my comment already! :smile5: You're someone!
And yes, a Meeting may be a wave-break (?) where all we know goes into million drops...
Your poem - true and sincere and - please forgive me for interrupting myself abruptly - but for a reason that entirely escapes my rational mind I have suddenly thought, in connection with you, of H. Miller's "Smile at the Foot of the Ladder" - have you ever read it? It seems to me you too would reach the moon if you only could, to live a life of freedom and beauty....

[dafydd manton]

Thanks for the suggestion, Bar. I haven't read "Smile at the foot of the ladder", but it's ow on my list. Your analogy about reaching the moon for a life of freedom and beauty is very touching. If only............

[Jerrybaldy]

Bloody hell Daffy, you still got it bad. As a mate I have a duty to stop you mugging yourself. Picture her in a tired old dressing gown stood in front of the tv when you are trying to watch your favourite programme, pre menstrual, screaming that you never listen.
Jerry
here to help.

[dafydd manton]

Dear Geraldo, why you didn;t just scream that through the cell wall but I will never know. Thanks you for the expert image of #@#~*&*, but I already have one of those thank you. As we speak, she is down the Locomotive Works, grafting on her part-time job of Kick-starting railway engines, before tonight's Pickled Egg Eating contest at the Welder's Elbow public house. As I explained to Hawk (of that ilk), this may well not be a love poem at all. Since the next poem I have lined up, on the starting blocks, is about your good (sic) self, it may be best to stop thinking about undying lust.

Remember: Them as asks no questions isn't told no lie. Watch the wall, my darlings, as the gentlemen go by

[Jerrybaldy]

Daffy mate (sic)
your rehabilitation is, as matron told me, coming along swimmingly.
Im not sure I'm ready for your homoerotic piece though Daf. :P

[dafydd manton]

You have no conception (being a bloke) of how relieved I am by that statement!. I shall wait till later, partly so as not to clog either the forum or the arteries, and partly for when Delta and Mary come on, assuming they do. I believe it is in the middle of the night on Oz Trayler, when the inhabitants all dream of kangaroo burgers and corks on wedding veils, or something. Might have been wedding veils on kangaros, now I come to think of it. I have no idea where the corks go.

[Maryd.]

Dearest D, you have managed to produce another, fine yet intriguing piece of writing. Leading the reader to question and eve pass on advice, like Jer.

Oh and by the way, who is Matron?

[dafydd manton]

Matron? All will be revealed!

And please, no advice!

[Maryd.]

Ah, revealed.... Please explain?

[dafydd manton]

Matron runs the loony bin that Jerry and I inhabit, when we're not on here. She keeps us in order with a rod of iron and a leg of wood.

[Maryd.]

Oh... A mental hospital... Why didn't you say. I live in one of those places.

[Hawkman]

Who needs to read a Goon show script when it's all here!

[dafydd manton]

Is yours like ours, where the lunatics run the place?

[dafydd manton]

Who needs to read a Goon show script when it's all here!

Ying Tong Iddle I Po!

[Hawkman]

Bluebottle: Eccles, raise right leg.
Eccles raises right leg
Bluebottle: Eccles, raise left leg.
Eccles raises left leg.
Bluebottle: Eccles, how come you got three legs?
Eccles: Oh, the fourth one fell off.

[Maryd.]

Is yours like ours, where the lunatics run the place?

Yes, my good sir... I run it... Yahooooo.

[dafydd manton]

Seagoon: Eccles, what are YOU doing here?

Eccles: Werl, everybody got to be somewhere.

[Hawkman]

Bluebottle: You nasty rotten cruel thing , Eccles, You may have fleas of your own some day!

[Maryd.]

Oh no... I'm somewhere... I'd rather not be there. Where shall I go now?

[dafydd manton]

You could try walking backwards across the Irish Sea.

*Explanation for antipodean friends. It's all from a radio programme called The Goon Show, which some of us are old enough to remember.*

[Maryd.]

Ah, thanks for that...

I tried the backward walk... It worked, I drowned.

[dafydd manton]

AH. So, we shall record: Here Lyeth Mary, whose last words were "Glub Glub Glub!"

[Maryd.]

Hahahaha

[Haunted]

wow, caught me off guard, the cynical beginning and the transition to an innocent voice.
Soooo cute! (I know this doesn't sound all that macho but then again that's the point, isn't it)

[lallison]

An amazingly multi dimensional poem.

[PrinceMyshkin]

Looney-bin or no, this is a beautifully sane tribute to the insanity of romantic love.

[dafydd manton]

A neat summing-up, Prince. Thanks so much!

[Haunted]

An amazingly multi dimensional poem.

hey hey hey, has someone just copied my comments for Prince's poem word for word??? I think Dafy deserves an original comment and I sure am not keen on having someone stealing my lines.

http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?p=946089

[dafydd manton]

Thanks, Haunted dear, but I've reached that time in life when I'll take any compliments coming my way..... thing like "nice bald spot", or being that fat suits you!!"

[Haunted]

so do I. But when someone is using something I wrote word for word and not pay me royalties, the least they can do is to give me a byline! :flare:

[dafydd manton]

Imitation, they say, is the sincerest form of flattery. Given current exchange rates, I'd guess you are about 7c down!